Goliath Manor

To prove his love for his fiancee, T. M. Davidson built Goliath Manor, a rambling rotunda out of the pure marble he brought out of Marble Quarry. Started in 1876, the manor was half-way completed when he went back to Boston and painted such a thrilling picture of his mountain wealth that Elizabeth Quincy Appleton married him and started the trek West. Before the manor was complete, Mr Davidson built a hunting and guest manor and invited distinguished guests to visit him in his mountain fastness. The few who did were impressed by the game and the alpine scenery.

Running the household on the level that Mr. Davidson envisioned, however, proved insufferably difficult. Elizabeth wished to return to her life in Boston and would have no part in managing the manor in such a primitive area. Servants needed to run the manor in the European style were difficult to keep since the high ratio of men to women meant that any domestic servant¹, like Dell Harmon, could pick and choose her husband to find a better life. The Davidsons lived in seclusion. After Elizabeth’s death in 1906, T. M. gave the Ladies Aid use of the manor for Christmas banquets and spring balls.

T. M. Davidson’s Denver business associates claimed the manor and quarry to pay off fearsome mortgages after his death in 1914, and they tried to turn Goliath Manor into a luxury hotel. Never fully successful, the venture was finally finished off by the Great Crash of 1929 and the closing of the railroad.